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Sunday, January 9, 2011

I'm Still Here (2010)

Remember when actor Joaquin Phoenix retired from acting, started a rap career and generally went bat shit crazy? Well this documentary is about all of that. We now know that this was all at least partly staged in an effort to take a satirical look at Hollywood and the like. I think anyway. He still came off pretty nuts in this thing.

This film can best be likened to watching a train wreck. Phoenix is at times emotional, belligerent, cruel, wild and pitiful. If it was just all method acting I guess it would be sort of impressive but I don't think it's entirely that. I think it is sort of like Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat and Bruno movies. It seems that he is playing a fictional character but in real life. Because of this it is hard to tell what is real and what isn't. It had some interesting parts as well as some cringe inducing parts. If you like watching crazy people doing crazy shit you'll probably like this odd documentary. It definitely isn't for everyone though. In the end I think this movie was just sort of an excuse to act crazy, do drugs and fuck whores for a year without consequence. Hopefully the talented Phoenix's career will soon be back on track.

6 comments:

I enjoyed watching Overnight - as much as you can "enjoy" watching someone's hubris bring them down but I've been avoiding the Phoenix movie for all the reasons you said. I don't like feeling embarrassed for other people.

I just watched this movie a couple of weeks ago and completely hated it. I give Casey Affleck credit for trying something experimental but I just did not care about this movie at all. The most entertaining part is watching JP (in character?) on the Late Show and I can watch that on YouTube much easier.

I can't say I would disagree with you. This was a pretty hard movie to rate. If I would have been in a different mood that day I could have easily seen giving it a 1. Definitely a strange choice for the both of them.